The Payback Assignment (Stark and O'Brien Thriller Series) Read online

  After her one stinging remark, Felicity O’Brian turned and walked off across the sand. The outburst had caught the attention of others nearby who were busy looking embarrassed when she passed them. Behind her, Felicity could hear heated words passing between the Stahls as she left. That was good. They would probably argue for an hour. Then they would join the rest of the party when it moved to the rocky lookout at La Quebrada to watch the courageous native divers fly into the air and down into the waves. They would not be headed for home anytime soon.

  Felicity went into the hotel, found the ladies’ lounge and walked to the farthest stall. After locking the door she perched carefully on the edge of the seat, not wanting to risk getting her gown wet. She drew an odd looking metal device from her purse. It resembled a tiny waffle iron, with a pattern inside that looked much like a key blank when she opened it. Next she removed a key from a key ring and placed it on top of the blank. She had taken the key ring from John Stahl’s pocket quite easily, without his noticing. In her opinion, a man of Stahl’s financial standing shouldn’t even carry a front door key.

  She partially closed the double handled tool she held and turned the tiny screws on one side. The screws moved the cutting blades inside. When they were in place, pressed against the edges of Stahl’s key, she used both hands to squeeze the handles together. After a few seconds of pressure she heard a subtle pop, and tiny bits of metal clattered to the floor. When she opened the odd device, a smile lit her face. Beneath the key she had placed inside lay an exact duplicate. The job was on.

  She replaced the original key on its ring. On her way out of the hotel, she dropped the “borrowed” key ring in front of the men’s room door. She was confident that someone would pick it up before long and hand it in to the hotel management. Some ambitious employee, anxious for a fat tip would announce his find and search until he returned the keys to Stahl. He would probably tell them he did not remember dropping his keys, but since he had them back he would think no more about it.

  Felicity enjoyed the ocean breeze and the electric scent of the Pacific until the valet brought her car around. She slid down behind the wheel of her jet-black 300 ZX turbo and smoothly moved out onto the wide avenue. Traffic was heavy for ten p.m. She competed for road space mostly with aging Volkswagen Beetles, little Fiats, tiny Renaults, and a variety of other small, older cars whose drivers made liberal use of their horns. Like most of the city’s major streets, this one had a wide median strip, adorned with tall sculptures. She was looking for a particular monument, which was her landmark.

  Finally she spotted it. It was some sort of unpronounceable Mexican god, but the body parts matched her memory of the one she was looking for. She cornered sharply, down-shifting and rocketing down the narrow lane, pushing her sleek sports car over ninety miles per hour.

  She knew exactly where she was going. She had done her research well, including a lot of surveillance during the last thirty days. The contractor who contacted her more than a month ago was impatient. He had an anxious client who wanted a particular antique jeweled brooch. Apparently the client had tried to purchase this piece through an agent, but to his surprise the present owner refused to sell. So he decided to hire a professional to retrieve it.

  While one part of Felicity’s mind focused on driving, another considered the unusually fine and exceedingly rare item she had been asked to acquire. The only reference she had found to it listed its value at eighty thousand dollars.

  It seemed clear that tonight’s target meant more than money to the client. Felicity would receive half of its current market value on delivery, a quick forty thousand dollars. Even with her lifestyle, she could relax for a couple of months after this one. The contractor had given her the present owner’s name and offered her other assistance, but she had declined. Felicity was a technician and an artist, the best at what she did, and she preferred to work alone. That way, she stayed in complete control.

  With a slight squeal of tires, Felicity turned left down a still narrower road. She had now left streetlights behind, and was only a couple of miles away from her diamond treasure. She had already come to think of it as hers, even though she had only seen its image and the replica attached to Mrs. Stahl’s gown. One good look had told her Mrs. Stahl was not wearing the real thing.

  With only moonlight to guide her, she pulled her car off to the side of the narrow road a couple of hundred feet from Stahl’s front gate. A seven-foot wall surrounded the villa. A row of dahlia bushes, probably imported from the mountains, stood at its base. Their round, red, flowers bowed their heads, lending their almost imperceptible scent to the air. Because she didn’t want to crush them, the bushes would present more of a challenge than the barbed wire topping the wall. What lay beyond the wall, well that was another story.

  It was still quite warm outside when she stood next to her car and stripped. With cool efficiency she squirmed into her working clothes: a pair of black tights, a black stretch turtleneck pullover, and black suede boots. She strapped her hair back with a wide, black elastic band. A slim black shoulder bag from the car’s back seat completed her outfit. She had pre-packed it with everything she would need for this job. She paused for just a moment to stare up at the densely packed stars above her, filled her lungs with the sweetly scented air, and headed for work.

  The humidity was oppressive. Her skin was already damp and sticky after the brief jog to the wall, and she was feeling the weight of her long, thick hair. Someday she would overcome her vanity and cut it to a more convenient length. For now, she crouched beside the stuccoed stone wall and went over Stahl’s security system in her mind one last time.

  Two fierce Doberman pinschers roamed on the other side of the wall. Beyond them, the house itself was wired with a variety of alarms. Touch a window or wall and the police immediately got a ring. The alarm on the safe was wired separately. Dogs roaming freely meant that Stahl had decided against motion sensors or electric eyes outside the house. However he had installed an independent electric eye to stand guard in front of the safe. That information had been expensive, and she never did manage to find whoever installed the safe so its exact location remained a mystery.

  Felicity drew two large, raw, boneless steaks from her utility bag and flipped them over the wall. As they thumped to the ground, she could hear the pair of canines running. Seconds later she heard the dogs snarling. That menacing noise was quickly replaced by the slavering sounds of an animal feast. In her head she began ticking off seconds, something she did with unusual accuracy. According to her supplier the drug in the meat would take effect within two minutes. She could count the time off with accuracy to rival any stopwatch.

  Two minutes later, she hopped over the bushes to grip the top of the wall under the barbed wire. When she hoisted herself to the top of the wall and looked down she saw one dog sleeping on his side. The other one slumped over as she watched.

  She dropped to her feet again outside the wall. From her shoulder bag she pulled simple leather square, about two feet long on a side, and tossed it over the wire. Hopping to grip this, she flipped herself over the wall. Her landing was steady, on all fours. She sprinted the fifty yards to the door.

  All the outside pressure alarms were wired through, and controlled by the front door lock. It was an expensive option, and more complex than it needed to be. Its primary advantage was that it prevented Stahl from having to memorize a deactivation code. She simply pulled out the key she had made and slid it smoothly into the lock. As she turned the key, the deadbolt slid back and all of the alarms except for those on the safe were turned off. Smiling, she opened the door and walked in as if she belonged there.

  The villa was a scaled down mansion, but she did not need a light to find her way around. The floor plan was locked within her photographic memory, and she could call it up like a diagram displayed on a screen. The living room, with its semi-circular sofa, was adjacent to the dining room and overlooked the patio. That gave the ground floor an opening for fresh air
to flow through. That sliding glass entrance overlooked the swimming pool and even at night offered a magnificent view.

  Knowing that the staff left at night, Felicity headed straight up the long staircase. Again she reached into her bag. This time, she produced a palm-sized disc with an earphone attachment. Fitting the earpiece into her left ear, she began probing the walls, staying between three and four inches away from the tasteful blue flowered wallpaper. She worked around furniture, paying special attention near light switches and electrical sockets. It was slow, tedious work. The tension in her neck grew as the minutes crawled by.

  She was beside the king-size bed when the quiet beeping began. Pressing her hand unit to the headboard caused the volume to rise to maximum. With a smile she returned the tiny metal detector to its home inside her bag and began probing the wood with long delicate fingers for a trip lever.

  The button turned out to be under the solid oak headboard’s top shelf. She had to press it in and push it to one side. As she did this, the entire headboard slid smoothly to the right, revealing a built-in safe, set flush with the wall.

  Staring at the recessed steel door, Felicity heaved a sigh of relief. Until this minute, she faced the possibility that she might be unfamiliar with the safe’s protective system. Luckily for her it was a common Model Number 14 Fort Knox inset wall safe, at least three years old. She knew exactly what type of integral alarm would be used. She stepped into the hallway, moving to the nearest linen closet. Behind a stack of satin sheets she found a control panel on the wall. It required only two quick adjustments with a cross-tipped screwdriver to deactivate the alarm. Certainly a switch in the bedroom somewhere did the same thing, but there was no reason to waste more time searching for it.

  Felicity’s profession required her to be very knowledgeable about safes and security systems. She had studied these devices for several years, researching like a candidate for a rather specific Masters Degree program. This particular safe was a fairly old, basic tumbler type design. Stahl had been penny wise and pound foolish not to install a more up-to-date electronic type. She knew how to deal with the latest mechanisms too, but this one called for some of her old school skills.

  She had to kneel on oversized pillows at the head of the bed to reach the safe door. She stuck a magnetized amplifier to it. A short wire led from the amplifier to an earplug. Once she had that in place in her left ear she began turning the dial slowly, picturing the disc shaped tumblers behind it. Listening for the clicking noise as each tumbler aligned with the bolt release mechanism, she soon deciphered the combination. When the last number fell into place, she turned the lever and pulled open the square steel door.

  When she looked inside, her breath caught in her throat. God, it was a beautiful piece of work. It seemed quite at home surrounded by a stack of currency and a pair of pearl necklaces. She had a special weakness for Russian malachite, the green marbled semiprecious stone which, in this case, served as a setting for one of the most perfect teardrop diamonds Felicity had ever seen. Finding this kind of clarity in a three and a half carat diamond would be a thrill, even if it weren’t mounted in her favorite stone.

  During her research, she had learned how this pendant had passed through several generations of Russian royalty. It was created originally for Sophia, wife of Ivan III, late in the fourteen hundreds. It was Ivan the Terrible who added the halo of perfectly matched pearls, and the smaller but equally exquisite square cut rose diamonds at the four compass points, just inside the pearl circle. After that, it passed in and out of royal houses as a gift, and sometimes as a bribe. Women had lied and laid for it. Czars had bled on it. It had been shown off with Faberge eggs and worn with priceless furs.

  She briefly wished she had spotted this luscious treat for herself, but reminded herself that forty thousand dollars would allow her to be lazy and pick her shots for a while.

  Respectfully, almost lovingly, she lifted the glittering prize from its resting place, replacing it with a flawless copy from her bag. This imitation was even better than the one Mrs. Stahl was wearing that evening. If, as Felicity expected, the brooch was seldom pulled out and inspected closely, weeks could pass before anyone discovered the theft. The incident at the beach party would be long forgotten by then.

  All that remained for Felicity was the simple task of covering her tracks. She locked the safe. She closed the headboard. She neatly remade the Stahls’ bed. She turned the alarms back on, leaving as she had entered, locking the door behind herself and dropping the key casually into her bag. Just being outdoors made her less tense. Once out of the house, the job was almost over. Relief flowed down her body, relaxing muscles and senses.

  But an unexpected sound snapped her head around.

  It was a low, rumbling growl.

  -7-

  One of the dogs was up. Her heart tripled its pace as she realized the drug did not last as long as her supplier said it would.

  “Nice doggy,” she said, with a waver in her voice. Hesitantly, she stepped away from the door. After all, there was no going back. All exterior alarms were now activated again and she had no time to fish around in her bag for the key.

  Felicity met the dog’s eyes as she began her slow movement toward the wall. The beast bared its teeth, starting forward on unsteady legs. She backed slowly away from the house, one hand extended. If the dog was sleepy enough, she might still escape this situation with her skin.

  Even as she thought that, the second dog raised his head and the first one began trotting toward her. Forcing her constricted chest to expand, sucking in a great gulp of air, she turned and leaned into the fifty-yard sprint to the wall. She heard the padded feet, so fast, behind her. Teeth gnashed, and she imagined the jaws open behind her, reaching for her legs.

  A dozen feet from the wall she began her dive. She heard slavering jaws snap shut inches from her legs as she grabbed her leather pad and vaulted over the wire. Behind her, the dogs hit the wall, barking and clawing as if they could climb after her. On unsteady legs, Felicity paused for four or five deep inhalations to regain her breath. Then, mindful of the noise, she snatched her leather pad, stuffed it into her utility bag, and ran for her car. Bouncing into the driver’s seat, she jammed the sleek, black craft into gear and sped off down the dark lane.

  Two miles but less than two minutes later, the 300 ZX pulled to the side of the road again. Now she took a deep breath and released it in a long sigh of relief. She loved the tension and excitement during a caper, even when things got a little more exciting than planned. But afterwards, as her adrenaline level began to drop, she all but collapsed. Only now did she feel the perspiration. She became aware of the clothes clinging to her body, the sore muscles from the climbing and jumping and...damn! A broken nail on her left hand.

  After the initial reaction, a slow, contented smile spread over her face. Lethargically, she got out of the car into the waist high grass. Staring at the skyful of stars above, she leisurely stripped, freed her hair, and toweled herself briskly. Just for a moment, she let the fresh air cool her naked form. Her skin now aglow, she donned her evening wear once again. Bending over, she brushed her hair out thoroughly before returning to the car.

  In her vanity mirror she meticulously removed and reapplied her makeup. She fished around in her bag with her right until she found the key to Stahl’s leased Acapulco villa. At the first major intersection she powered down her passenger side window and tossed out the key to Stahl’s villa. Now the caper was really over.

  Never, except in rare moments. Only at times like this, the mellow times, did she crave...something. But what? What was missing? Perhaps someone who would understand. No, not just that. She wanted contact with someone else who was good enough to appreciate her expertise. After all, she could not go boasting about the kind of skills she had to just anybody.

  The restlessness was setting in as she pulled into her parking space. She considered a quick swim, but decided it would not help. The Hyatt Regency Acapulco was quite comforta
ble, even luxurious, but that wasn’t what she needed now. She needed to move. She needed home. She would get to her room and make a reservation on the first plane out to her Los Angeles place. She would have the car shipped. That would take days, but she had the new Mercedes CLK Cabriolet convertible waiting in the garage at her California apartment building. She could drive it until her beloved Nissan arrived.

  But, as she approached her room door, Felicity’s head snapped up. She was getting that old familiar feeling. That funny tingle at the nape of her neck. That jangling of nerves that told her something was wrong, that she was in danger. She never questioned where it came from or why, but she knew it had helped her avoid capture on any number of occasions.

  Slowly she backed away from the door, her mind spinning. She returned to the elevator and pushed the button, already mapping out alternative travel arrangements. By the time the doors slid apart, she had her next move planned.

  “Why, Miss O’Brian, don’t you like the room?” The tall thin man in the elevator was neatly dressed in a blue cotton suit and held a small automatic pistol aimed at her navel. A shorter man stood beside him, with darker skin and straight black hair.

  “Please join me in the elevator,” the tall man said in a smooth, accent-free voice. “I’ll give you the layout before the two apes return. My name is Paul. I was sent to retrieve something which you recently acquired at the request of my employer.”

  “Fine, fine, only, why the gun? Just come back tomorrow after I’ve had some sleep and a shower. We’ll verify the funds deposited in my account and I’ll give you the package.”

  “I’m sorry,” Paul said, “but there’s been a change of plan. You will give me the antique brooch now. There will in fact be no exchange of funds. You will not interfere with my departure. My orders are rather liberal beyond that. I’d rather not kill you, but if I must...” Leaving that threat hanging in the air, he stretched out his left hand, palm up.